


meet you like a gentleman

by thinksideways



Category: American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Anal Sex, Burr's POV, Established Relationship, Foreshadowing, M/M, Pain, Pining, Post-Break Up, basically I'm terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:53:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinksideways/pseuds/thinksideways
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m asking that you visit him on my behalf. Try to talk him down a bit, for in truth, I have no desire to persecute this man, though he highly merits it,” Monroe says.<br/>“I’ll do my best,” Burr replies, and the two men shake hands, and Burr’s face betrays nothing, none of the dread or the strange sick swell of anticipation.</p><p>Burr is asked to convince Hamilton not to duel James Monroe. He can be very convincing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	meet you like a gentleman

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know that Burr convincing Monroe and Hamilton not to duel was a [Thing that actually happened](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time-when-alexander-hamilton-almost-dueled-james-monroe-180957045/?no-ist). Obviously I took like a thousand liberties, but this was Inspired By A True Story, the way a lot of horror movies are inspired by true stories.
> 
> This takes place a year or so after Alex's affair with Maria.
> 
> Finally, I wrote this as a 'deleted scene' (somewhere between chapters 4 and 5) to another fic of mine, [a kind of hideous intimacy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5280248), so I'm listing it as part of that series. No need to have read it to understand this fic, but there are some allusions in here. Basically they've had an on-again, off-again relationship and there is pining and misunderstanding and no one talking like adults and toxic relationships and it is terrible.

“Burr.”

James Monroe welcomes him into his office, shakes Burr’s hand firmly before offering him a chair.

“I do appreciate your help. I know you often worked with Hamilton, thought you might be able to, well…calm the waters a bit. Mediate things for us.”

Monroe clears his throat, sips noisily from a glass of water.

“We met the other day and things got a bit out of hand. Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Church came by and met with myself and Mr. Gelston, and he all but challenged me, jumping to his feet like that. I told him right there to get his pistols – which, now, I admit may have been premature – but Mr. Church separated us. I promised him an explanation, and I _sent_ him one, but apparently you can’t satisfy that man.”

Monroe spits the last words.

“He’s demanding I refute the charges, but frankly, Mr. Burr, I still have my doubts. And now he says he’s going to send someone by to negotiate a time and place! You know me, Mr. Burr; I’m not one to back down from a challenge…” Monroe trails off, but Burr nods to show his understanding. He knows the insinuations, that both men are circling one another, edging closer to the dueling ground. Monroe offers him the letters and Burr glances over them, his stomach twisting for a moment at the old familiar handwriting. The letters are long-winded and incessant, Hamilton embodied in ink, and Burr understands all too well Monroe’s frustrations with the man.

“I’m asking that you visit him on my behalf. Try to talk him down a bit, for in truth, I have no desire to persecute this man, though he highly merits it,” Monroe says.

“I’ll do my best,” Burr replies, and the two men shake hands, and Burr’s face betrays nothing, none of the dread or the strange sick swell of anticipation.

 

***

 

“Burr.”

The word sounds cold in Hamilton’s mouth and Burr cringes internally, but he stands his ground.

“Alexander,” he responds, his tone polite, almost friendly, as if he’d been greeted warmly. His smile is forced, but there. Hamilton doesn’t move from the doorway, though the house behind him is silent. Eliza took the children away again, Burr guesses. In these hot summers she was often away, preferring to stay with her father on the lakeside where the breezes off the water offer some semblance of relief.

There’s nothing quite so terrible as July heat.

Hamilton is still unmoving, and there is something awful about his stillness – in Burr’s thoughts, his memories, Hamilton is always busy, always a blur. He remembers watching Hamilton drum incessantly on his thighs, or brush at imaginary lint on his impeccable clothes. But now Hamilton is still, watchful, the weight of his gaze as heavy as it has ever been, a lead weight crushing against Burr’s chest.

“I have a message,” Burr proceeds with his mission, lifts the envelope into view, “from Mr. James Monroe.”

That catches Hamilton’s attention, and he finally steps aside, lets Burr in. The house is blissfully shaded and cool compared to the sweltering streets outside and Burr breathes a little sigh of relief.

“Please, sit,” says Hamilton. It strikes Burr as too formal, the stiff cadence in Hamilton’s voice, and he feels a familiar ache somewhere deep in his stomach. He shouldn’t have come here, even on business.

They’d been friends, once.

(They’d been so much more, once.)

Now, there is a tentativeness between them, like two wild-caught dogs penned together.

Still, Burr sits, though he remains at the edge of the seat. He perches stiffly on the couch, waits for Hamilton to sit as well, but Hamilton remains standing. He refuses to look at Burr.

“How’s Theodosia?” Hamilton asks. Still that stiff politeness, the odd formality.

“She’s all right. Bit unwell, lately, but nothing the doctors can’t fix. How’s Eliza?”

There’s a pause, just a bit too long, and then the answer, clipped: “she’s fine.”

Things lurk under that word – _fine_ – like creatures in the darkness, but Burr doesn’t press. He hadn’t come here to exchange pleasantries, he’d come here as a favor to Monroe, to try to put a stop to this foolishness, to prevent one or both men from dying a pointless death for this idea of honor.

“Glad to hear,” he says, “anyway, Monroe--”

“What did he tell you?” Hamilton interrupts, demanding. His tone is less stiffly formal now, but is still terse, bristled.

“That you almost attacked him. And if Church hadn’t been there, you might have.”

Hamilton barks a laugh, short and sharp.

“Did he tell you what he called me, first?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Called me a scoundrel. Got in _my_ face, refusing to even _listen_ to my requests…”

“Your request to ‘meet him like a gentleman,’ you mean? You practically threw down the gauntlet right there.”

Hamilton scoffs, then plows on.

“Not that that rat-faced bastard’s any kind of gentleman. But he insulted me. I merely defended my honor.”

Hamilton’s eyes cut away at that, something strange and clouded crossing his face. Burr’s seen that look before, and though he no longer speaks the language of Alexander Hamilton so fluently as he once did, he knows Hamilton’s hiding something.

But it is no longer his place to press, if it ever was.

“He won’t refute the charges.”

Burr knows this, he saw and skimmed the mountain of letters wherein Hamilton asked – demanded - that he do so.

“He has doubts, Alexander.”

“You— _he_ —can’t possibly think I was misusing funds.”

“That’s not my fight.”

 

***

 

(Years later, it will become his fight, when Burr stands with Jefferson and Madison and they confront Hamilton across the same desk Burr once fucked him on.)

 

***

 

“You’re being childish,” Burr says. It’s an old argument, he knows too well Hamilton’s particular penchant for pettiness. It feels cyclic, this argument, like they’ve had it a hundred times before. Because whatever he says, whatever argument he makes to Hamilton, doesn’t it all come down to _talk less, why can’t you just talk less?_

“I’m being--” begins Hamilton, but Burr cuts him off before he can finish, taking a bittersweet pleasure in doing so, robbing Hamilton of what words he can.

“Childish. Intransigent.”

The words are almost soft. He means them - Hamilton knows he does - but there’s something almost fascinating about Hamilton’s refusal to yield.

“What did I say to you, when we first met?” Burr asks.

He wonders if it’s a mistake to bring up the past, because not long after they first met Hamilton had had Burr pressed up against a wall, mouth on his neck, calling him _sir_ in a tone that had turned Burr’s knees liquid and his cock practically to stone.

Hamilton rolls his eyes, even smiles, “talk less, smile more?”

“The other thing.”

He doesn’t let Hamilton finish.

“Fools who run their mouths off wind up dead.”

“I’m not _running my mouth_ …”

“That’s _exactly_ what you’re doing, Alex. And that’s why I’m here. Trying to keep your sorry ass alive. From doing something you’d regret.”

“Then what do you suggest, Aaron? That I just ignore this kind of slander? Let Monroe walk all over me?”

“I merely suggest an amicable course,” Burr says. He ignores how his heart sped up when Hamilton called him _Aaron_ , “and not a fucking _duel_.”

Hamilton scoffs.

“I’m not scared.”

“I never said you were.”

 _More than willing to die,_ was how Hamilton had put it, once, but that seems impossibly long ago to Burr.

 

***

 

They fall quiet and the silence feels odd between them, for Hamilton had never been one to let silence fester the way it does now, but then, so much has changed in the years that Burr can no longer entirely predict the things that Hamilton does (not that he ever could, but once, he’d been passably fluent in the language of Hamilton, able to distill his soliloquies into their key points). Hamilton finally sits on the couch next to Burr, and he is achingly aware of exactly how many inches are between them. It is the closest they have been since that awful day in his office when Burr had reached for Hamilton's hand and Hamilton had withdrawn it, saying _I can't._

 _I can't_ were not often words that Burr heard from Hamilton, so they stung all the more when they had been aimed at him.

( _You have no beliefs_ , Hamilton had said, as if he couldn’t understand Burr’s beliefs unless they were shouted from the rooftop.)

 “Tell me,” Hamilton says, and there’s a note of pleading in his voice, “tell me you know I didn't do it. Misuse the government’s funds.”

Burr almost smiles at the sheer Hamilton-ness of it, this desire for his reputation to be upheld, his strange honor. Burr himself doesn’t know whether Hamilton misused funds or not – doesn’t entirely care, to be honest – but he’s made no judgement, hadn’t perused the evidence enough to be sure one way or another. He suspects Hamilton’s innocent of that particular charge – he’s always been lawful, almost to a fault.

“I know you didn’t do it,” he says. Maybe it’s a bit of a lie – he doesn’t _know_ , not for sure, and Burr so rarely speaks unless he’s sure– but he says it anyway, perhaps out of some misplaced, masochistic desire to prolong this moment between them, across from one another in the parlor, history stretched between them.

Hamilton shifts in his seat, restless once more, an action that Burr finds oddly comforting, reassured to see him regress back to his normal fidgeting self instead of the uneasy stillness that had met Burr when he’d first come in. Another inch between them disappears with Hamilton's fidgeting, and Burr is acutely aware of it. Hamilton still will not quite meet his eyes, though Burr can feel his gaze on him whenever he looks away.

“Do you miss it?” Hamilton says, almost apropos of nothing, save for the few inches between them. He must have noticed, too.

“It?” Burr says, repeats it like a question, but the way his tongue goes dry suggests he knows the answer.

“I didn't--” Burr begins. He had been meaning to say _I didn't come here for this,_ but then, hadn't some secret part of him wanted exactly this? Wanted his presence to force Hamilton to recall what they had once had, wanted the bittersweet nostalgia of Hamilton's gaze on him, wanted to force Hamilton to look upon him and remember what had transpired between them, and perhaps even to miss it, miss what they had once been, before the lines had diverged too far.

“I came here to convince you,” Burr amends, though the envelope now lies forgotten on the table between them. Hamilton's eyes fall to it and once again that strange, shadowy expression falls across his face and Burr wonders what he's hiding, what is not being said.

A familiar feeling, this: Burr wondering, _for all your words, what are you_ not _saying?_

Hamilton laughs, a strangely bitter sound, like he's not entirely sure he should be laughing at all.

“I do,” Hamilton says, answering his own question, ignoring Burr’s floundering, and Burr’s heart lurches in his chest, “sometimes.”

( _You'll ruin me,_ Hamilton had said, as Burr withdrew his hand. The lines had diverged irrevocably then, and Burr had done his best to put Hamilton out of his mind.)

But Hamilton never did stay quiet, whether in memory or in life, and so it seemed he was here again dredging up old memories, old sweetnesses, things that Burr preferred - things he _needed_ \- to stay buried.

Because here now, the question hanging, with the weight of Hamilton’s unmet gaze upon him, Burr finds himself remembering all those things he shouldn’t - the night in the field under a star-wrecked sky when they had been young, their recklessness in the camp tents, and Hamilton laid prone across the desk, ink staining both of their skins, mixed. And it is too much, all this, too much.

“Me too,” Burr says softly. He misses it – misses _them_ \- the way one misses things that they know they shouldn't, with a sort of bittersweet nostalgia, the knowledge that the past makes things seem ever so much better than they ever really were; yet he misses them all the same.

Hamilton is close enough now that Burr can smell him, and the scent calls forth still more memories. Worse still, Hamilton’s scent brightens these memories in Burr’s impeccable mind, sharpens them to a knife-honed edge, and Burr is no longer entirely sure how much longer he can stand being this close to him as his mind floods with all these memories of Hamilton prone beneath him, Hamilton begging, Hamilton holding him, after, kissing him slow and sweet like they had all the time in the world.

There is still too much between them for this.

“You said you came here to convince me,” Hamilton says, and there is something in his voice that is familiar, a certain sly wickedness that Burr recalls from their younger days. But he isn't sure, because hope is a pathetic and determined thing, and he doesn't know what's real and what he's projecting onto the situation. Burr is not even entirely sure if he even _is_ hopeful, or if it's something else, something like instinct, a visceral reaction to this close proximity to Hamilton that cultivates the need to touch him, breathe him in. Hamilton is almost like something incorporeal, something a part of Burr will always crave, even if he detests him. A magnetism exists between them, although Burr has often tried to deny it, but here like this, in this closeness, it's hard to deny it even to himself.

“Yes,” Burr replies, trying to steady himself, trying to find his ground once more.

“I remember you as being very convincing, once,” Hamilton says, and now there is no denying the wickedness that has slipped back into his tone. There's even a smile creeping across his face, one Burr knows with a sickening familiarity.

Hope is a pathetic and determined thing.

“Oh?”  Burr asks, and maybe his voice sounds a bit shaky, a bit more high-pitched than he would have preferred.

“Very,” Hamilton says.  

“You were pretty convincing yourself,” replies Burr, and his voice is a bit steadier now, as if the years have been rolled back.

Hamilton laughs a little at that, and his smile is heartbreaking. Burr is unable to look directly at him, now, as if Hamilton is the sun, something bright and terrible who might burn Burr alive if he stands near him for too long.

Burr has the sense that they are both dancing around something, something that neither of them will say, or, perhaps, something neither of them will admit to: that there is still a draw between them, an inevitability, one neither man has ever been able to truly deny.

Burr is the one who shifts, this time, and the last inch between them disappears. Their legs touch, and Burrs has to fight a gasp at the contact, the knowledge that they are touching again; and even such a small intimacy as this makes him half hard. Because even such a small touch as this, their thighs now pressed lightly against one another, drudges forth all the years, all the memories, and Burr’s own encyclopedic knowledge of Alexander Hamilton’s body.

Hamilton does not move his leg, instead becomes queerly still, though Burr still sees his hands fluttering, fidgeting at a line on his breeches. It's its own small challenge, this, both men still circling but neither saying anything, moving in inches, a dance, a dare.

All this talking, but not saying anything.

Burr presses his thigh a bit closer, shifts his leg just slightly, and the slow friction that rolls over his leg is strangely erotic. It's such a small motion, benign, but Burr still feels it in every inch of him.

Hamilton makes a little noise the back of his throat, and it sends a flood of memories through Burr. He knows that sound, knows it like he knows the flush Hamilton’s skin and the staccato of his breath.

Hamilton then mutters something under his breath the Burr can't quite catch.

“Beg pardon?” Burr asks, and Hamilton actually _glares_ at him, a sight that might have been comical if there were not such a strange electricity crackling between them.

“I _said_ ,” Hamilton begins, and there is a lightness in his voice, “sometimes you're such a fucking tease.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Burr asks, and he isn't sure how he hopes Hamilton will answer. He can feel the magnetism they've always carried working, drawing them closer, and he is scared that Hamilton will stop it, and scared that he won't. Because he knows they have ended, Burr has long ago accepted it, but here once more in this proximity, with the heat of Hamilton's leg against him, the weight of his gaze, Burr is rocketed back, bared, exposed and _wanting_ despite the knowledge no good can come of it, that this is salt in the wound.

“No,” Hamilton says, and there is raw edge of his voice, something feral, full of hunger and need.

Burr feels as if he is perched on the edge of a precipice, staring down, into a turbulent sea. _One step is all it would take_ , he thinks, _one step._

It is not a step, in the end; rather, it's how Burr moves his hands, placing one on Alexander's thigh, pressing into it, and bringing the other one up to cup his cheek. Hamilton's face flushes hot at the touch, and this, combined with the familiarity of his skin beneath his fingertips, the rough bristles of his beard against the lines of his palm, is almost too much to bear.

“ _Alexander_ ,” says Burr softly, and he hates the tenderness in his voice, the sudden terrible knowledge that he still loves him, despite the years; despite the fact they have drifted too far apart to ever be something salvageable.

But pausing like this allows him to think about what he is doing, about what _they_ are doing, so he pauses no more. Instead, he kisses Hamilton, and Hamilton's mouth is open and pliant beneath him, a familiar dance they both know all too well. Hamilton kisses him back hungrily and Burr’s doubts begin to fade. Of course, there will be many doubts later, a whole impenetrable mountain of them, but right now he can taste Hamilton on his lips, and he is moaning thickly beneath the ministrations of Burr’s hands and mouth and Burr’s vision tunnels down to this moment until he can think of nothing else.

Once they are kissing, once that line has been crossed, things progress quickly. Hamilton straddles him, hands scrabbling at him, nails digging into his skin, first over his clothes, and then quickly flat on Burr’s skin. Burr is hard now, almost ridiculously so, and when he feels the flat of Hamilton's palm against him, an animalistic groan that he barely recognizes as his is wrenched from his lips.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Hamilton breathes, and the word is ragged and terrible and Burr loves it, wants him to say it a thousand more times, wants to _make_ him say it.

Burr does not speak in response, instead growls something low in his throat. He can still feel Hamilton’s hand on him and his hips roll, buck up as if on their own accord, and even the small friction of Hamilton’s palm dragging across him is enough to make his vision explode in stars.

Time had done nothing to dull the chemistry between them, and how it feels now between them is more than chemistry: this is a fire, something all-consuming. Burr’s nerves feel exposed, and he’s breathing heavily, audible gasps that seem to spur Hamilton on. He feels weak, to already be trembling like this beneath Hamilton’s touch, but when his own hands flit across Hamilton's tan skin he hears how his breath changes, the moans that escape his lips even though Burr has yet to even place his hand on Hamilton’s cock. It feels good, to know that that he affects Hamilton in at least some way similar to the way Hamilton affects him. To know that the chemistry has not been lost for Hamilton, either.

That if this is a fire, at least they might both be burned.

“Aaron,” Hamilton breathes, and then, “ _sir_.”

And in his voice there such want, such _need_ , that Burr can hardly stand it. He doesn't want Hamilton to talk, doesn't want either of them to speak, cannot have this acknowledged.

Hamilton, thank god, says nothing else in that wanting voice, certainly nothing so bittersweet as Burr’s name, instead returns to low moans and ragged breaths as Burr’s hands move across him. Soon they are both naked on the couch, Hamilton straddling him. He feels Hamilton's hands flutter like birds across his rib cage, resting for a moment on the ink stain that had been marked there. The one you only notice if you know that it's there.

“I think about that night a lot,” Hamilton says, something wistful in his voice. Burr’s thinks often of that night too, how Hamilton had written paragraph upon paragraph across Burr’s dark skin, the ink barely legible, how he fucked Hamilton across that desk, the ink from Burr’s skin spilling on both of them.

( _What are you writing?_ Burr had asked, and Hamilton had said, _everything I want to do to you_.)

It hadn't been until after that Burr noticed that one particular blotch of ink had stayed on his ribs, sunk under the skin, and would not leave no matter how hard he scrubbed the spot. It had faded some, in time, but it still remains, and Burr has developed a nervous habit of sometimes lifting his fingers there, tracing this blotch of ink, a circle broken open.

“Me too,” Burr says, and nothing else.

Hamilton goes back to savaging Burr’s skin, biting and sucking until Burr’s neck feels bruised. They have so rarely been gentle together, and this is no exception. But Burr savors every moment of it, savors the feel of Hamilton's teeth sinking in his skin, the drag of his own fingers across Hamilton’s skin, the fervor that surrounds them both.

Hamilton strokes him slowly with his spit-slick hand, until finally he guides Burr into him. Burr knows that spit is not enough, and knows Hamilton knows this too, but Hamilton has always liked it to hurt, just a little bit.

Hamilton is tight, nearly as tight as he had been when they first met and had first started all this, and Burr takes a bitter, savage pleasure in knowing that there has been no one else since him, not in this way.

Hamilton growls thickly as Burr breaches him, head thrown back, the expression on his face indecipherable. His eyes are closed and tight and his mouth is drawn back into a grimace but when Burr begins to withdraw, not wanting to hurt him, Hamilton instead sinks back down onto him, determined, saying _no, no, stay with me_.

Burr stays.

Hamilton rides him like that, there on the couch, and too soon Burr has to grab Hamilton's hips, stop his movements.

“Wait,” he chokes out, and Hamilton does. They stay like that, unmoving, and Hamilton places his forehead against Burr’s and in that wretched moment Burr has the stupid, pitiful hope that there is something salvageable between them.

Hamilton begins to move again, moving his hips in slow, lazy circles. Burr spits in his palm and takes Hamilton's cock in his hand, relishing the feel, the familiar thickness. He moves his hand slowly up the shaft, thumb circling the head, matching the lazy pace of Hamilton's hips. Burr thinks what he would give up to stay like this, forever, in this one fraught moment where they are joined, where they can pretend that history does not exist, that they can somehow overcome the vast and yawning chasm that has opened between them, the one that they both know is fundamentally impassable.

“Fuck me, Aaron,” Hamilton finally says, after what seems like only a few seconds and an eternity both, drags them from this strange and lazy stasis.

Burr obliges, because he is a smart man and he knows that this cannot last, so he gives Hamilton what he wants. He takes them both to the floor, pushes Hamilton to his hands and knees, so that he does not have to look in his eyes and be tempted to say things he'd regret. He fucks him there on the rug, pounds into Hamilton for as long as he can, and finally Hamilton’s sweet begging and the tight, hot warmth of him brings him over the edge. His orgasm seems to flood his whole body, spiking into every nerve and edge of him. His fingers curl in tight bruises against Hamilton's hips and he is aware, distantly, that Hamilton is shouting his name.

They collapse like that, sticky and sweaty on the rug, and Hamilton takes his hand, and despite all that has transpired this feels somehow the most intimate of them all. Perhaps because it is not out of any animalistic want, but something else, something Burr dreads defining.

Burr begins to feel rational thought return, the knowledge of what they've done piling on him like sandbags. He feels the burn on his knees from the rug, the throbbing pain where Hamilton's teeth met his neck, and worst of all, the knowledge that this will surely never happen again. Hamilton’s hand is still in his, and Burr focuses on that, savors this moment, this afterglow. Hamilton’s thumb traces small circles over the back of Burr’s hands, and suddenly he has to fight the overwhelming urge to cry, to beg: to beg Hamilton to stay, to beg time to rewind itself, to take them back to when they were young, to when there was no chasm between them, to a time when there was still something to salvage.

They get dressed, slow, neither man entirely sure what to say or do. Finally, Hamilton picks up the envelope that has long lain forgotten on the table.

“Tell Monroe,” Hamilton says, “that you have convinced me to not pursue further action. I'm satisfied.”

 

***

 

Burr walks out the door, and does not look back, does not _let_ himself look back. He doesn't see Hamilton there in the doorway, watching him leave.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Your thoughts are always welcome <33
> 
> you can find me on tumblr over [here](thinksideways.tumblr.com), if you're so inclined.


End file.
